The Exams
The last month has been a bit of a slog, as we finished the classes and then went straight into mocks the following week before the real exams last week. We were the first lot through the new electronic exams and although there was a little apprehension as to whether all would be in place in time, there was a real effort from the CTC team to get it all set up and it worked really well. The main difference with these exams when compared to the old paper system is that each person sits a different exam, with the questions being pulled from a larger bank of questions. It was all quite a smooth process in the end and the real benefit was getting our results the day after exams were finished. Thankfully I passed all my exams, so that's 7 subjects down and I am officially half way through groundschool.
People employed various revision tactics over the exam period, although most of us used the online question bank pretty extensively, which has 1000s of questions similar to the ones we saw in the exams. My approach was to go into CTC most days, staying until late (that meant a few microwaved dinners, unfortunately) and I would generally read through all the class notes or the CBT software and make my own brief notes before heading into the question bank to test myself. Others purely used the question bank so that they had seen most of the questions before taking the exam - it's all a personal preference! Although there were some subjects, like the two Communications exams where it just made sense to keep going through the question bank as they were pretty much identical to real exam.
The Holiday
I managed a few days back home over the weekend, and it felt amazing to have time without any CBT or question bank to do! I caught some much needed sun (the windowless rooms in CTC left us severely lacking in vitamin D by the end of exam period) and enjoyed catching up with friends and family without any work in the back of my mind. It was a bit of a shock to the system to have to go in again today, starting module two. Today we started GNav (General Navigation) which was quite a nice way to start actually as the introductory bits had more or less been covered in module one - I don't doubt that there'll be plenty of new information coming our way again soon though. It's also back into the routine of doing CBT in the evenings once class has finished, which I certainly didn't miss!
Other news
Since I last posted I had a trip up to the CTC base at Bournemouth Airport to have a look around in the simulators and the facility there with a coursemate. It was nice to chat to some of the other cadets who were there having got back from New Zealand and doing their Instrument Rating now. We also grabbed some food at the local flying club cafe and enjoyed a bit of plane spotting while we were waiting to sit in on a simulator ride. The sims at Bournemouth are DA42s, so quite different from the simulators at Nursling which are all Boeing or Airbus jets. We didn't stay for the whole simulator session as we had revision to do, but it was interesting to have a nose around the centre and get a feel for what is to come.
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| The DA42 sim - the screen is grey to simulate flying in cloud, not much to see for us observers! |
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| The CTC fleet of DA42s |
Last night we had another meet up with the BA cadets currently at CTC. It was a farewell to the BA guys on CP 115, who finished yesterday and are off to NZ in a couple of weeks, and a chance to meet the new guys on CP 120 who have just started. I must admit that we are envious of the guys heading out to New Zealand this month, that still feels a long way off!
Back to CBT for me, thanks for reading.
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